<TITLE>VisAD Home Page</TITLE>

<h1>Introduction</h1>

VisAD is a system for visualizing and interactively steering scientifc
computations.  It provides:<p>

* An interactive computational environment combining a flexible
interpreted language with linkages to Fortran and C.<p>

* A data model that lets users design data types appropriate
to their applications.<p>

* A novel and flexible way to visualize computations.<p>

VisAD includes a large number of example programs and data sets
that demonstrate its flexibility.  While it has been developed
primarily to meet the needs of environmental scientists, its
flexibility makes it useful to any scientists who develop
algorithms or use computers to analyze data.<p>

Here's a screen shot of VisAD:<p>

<img src="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/visad.gif">
<p>

Version 1.1 of VisAD runs on Silicon Graphics workstation.
Later versions will be ported to other vendors' workstations.<p>

VisAD was written by the
<a href="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/vis.html"> Visualization Project</a>
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
<a href="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/"> Space Science and Engineering Center</a>
(SSEC) by
<a href="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/homepage1.html"> Bill Hibbard </a> and
<a href="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~brianp/homepage1.html"> Brian Paul </a>. <p>

The development of VisAD was supported by NASA.<p>

<h1>How to get VisAD</h1>

VisAD is available by anonymous ftp.  The
<a href="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/visad/README"> README </a>
file contains the complete VisAD documentation.
The latest version of VisAD is in
<a href="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/visad/visad.1.1.tar.Z">
visad.1.1.tar.Z</a>.<p>

Manual ftp operation:<p>

<pre>
% <b>ftp iris.ssec.wisc.edu</b>
Connected to iris.ssec.wisc.edu
Name:  <b>anonymous</b>
Guest login ok, type your name as password.
Password:  <b>myname@address</b>
ftp> <b>cd pub/visad</b>
ftp> <b>asc</b>
ftp> <b>get README</b>
ftp> <b>bin</b>
ftp> <b>get visad.1.1.tar.Z</b>
ftp> <b>bye</b>
</pre>

Or, <a href="ftp://iris.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/visad"> click here </a> to browse
the VisAD ftp archive.<p>


<h1>If you are in Europe</h1>


Recently users in Europe have had problems with low bandwidth to North American
ftp servers.  The
<a href="http://www.dkrz.de">Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum</a>
has offered to serve as a mirror
site for our software.  Here are the pointers to the
<a href="ftp://ftp.dkrz.de/pub/visu/ssec/visad/README">VisAD README</a>
file and to the
<a href="ftp://ftp.dkrz.de/pub/visu/ssec/visad/visad.1.1.tar.Z">visad.1.1.tar.Z</a>
file.<p>

Manual ftp operation:<p>

<pre>
% <b>ftp ftp.dkrz.de</b>
Connected to info.dkrz.de
Name:  <b>anonymous</b>
Guest login ok, type your name as password.
Password:  <b>myname@address</b>
ftp> <b>cd pub/visu/ssec/visad</b>
ftp> <b>asc</b>
ftp> <b>get README</b>
ftp> <b>bin</b>
ftp> <b>get visad.1.1.tar.Z</b>
ftp> <b>bye</b>
</pre>

Or, <a href="ftp://ftp.dkrz.de/pub/visu/ssec/visad"> click here </a> to browse
their VisAD ftp archive.<p>


<h1>Disclaimer</h1>

VisAD is free software and as such we do not provide real support
for it.  However, we will be happy to answer short questions and/or
help with minor problems (preferably by email).<p>


<h1>To contact the authors...</h1>

Email can be sent to Bill Hibbard at whibbard@macc.wisc.edu
or Brian Paul at brianp@ssec.wisc.edu.<p>
U.S. Mail can be sent to:<p>
<pre>
Space Science and Engineering Center
University of Wisconsin - Madison
1225 W. Dayton St.
Madison, WI  53706
</pre>


<P>
Several papers are available describing the VisAD system, including:<P>
<UL>

<LI><B> <A HREF="ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/computer-vision/computer94-hibbard.ps.Z">
     Interactive Visualization of Earth and Space Science Computations</A> <BR> </B>
     W. L. Hibbard, B. E. Paul, A. L. Battaiola, D. A. Santek,
     M-F. Voidrot-Martinez, and C. R. Dyer,
     <CITE>Computer</CITE><B> 27</B>, No. 7, July 1994, 65-72.<P>  

<LI> <B> <A HREF="ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/computer-vision/vis94-hibbard.ps.Z">
     A Lattice Model for Data Display</A> <BR> </B>
     W. L. Hibbard, C. R. Dyer, and B. E. Paul,
     <CITE>Proc. Visualization '94</CITE>, 1994, 310-317. <P>

<LI> <B> <A HREF="ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/computer-vision/vis92-hibbard.ps.Z">
     Display of Scientific Data Structures for Algorithm Visualization</A> <BR>
     </B>
     W. Hibbard, C. R. Dyer, and B. Paul,
     <CITE>Proc. Visualization '92</CITE>, 1992, 139-146.<P>

</UL>



<h1>P.S.</h1>

We also have a home page for
<a href="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/vis5d.html">Vis5D</a>.<p>

